A whiplash election year enters its final stretch as Trump holds wild cards

WASHINGTON (AP) – In the earliest days of this election cycle, the U.S.

What happened

In practice, the East Wing of the White House was still standing and the Kennedy Center wasn't threatened with demolition. Artificial intelligence data centers weren't bipartisan shorthand for the tech sector's excess. Democratic socialists were largely confined to the outer edges of political discourse. Lake Ontario's name wasn't in question.

Since President Donald Trump entered politics more than a decade ago, he's had a knack for dominating the national conversation so thoroughly that it can be hard to keep up. But as the final midterm of his presidency rapidly approaches, the landscape is proving especially volatile, with Trump often stirring the tumult.

The bottom line

For now, a whiplash election year enters its final stretch as Trump holds wild remains the part of the story worth watching, and further updates are likely as more details are confirmed.